Spanish firm Acciona has been selected for a number of roles at the under-construction Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, including work on Tutankhamun’s burial chamber.
Acciona’s productions and design team was chosen for the €11m job by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture and its contractor, a joint venture between Belgium’s Besix and Egypt’s Orascom.
Acciona’s work on the project includes:
- Technical and museographic development roles in four areas measuring a total of 12,000 sq m;
- Exhibition elements, such as graphics, models, life-sized reproductions and exhibition and staging lighting;
- A 3D scan of Tutankhamun’s outer burial chamber, to provide an exact digital model of the original that can be turned into a physical reproduction for future display.
When completed, the Grand Egyptian Museum will be the largest archaeological museum in the world, housing 45,000 artefacts, 25,000 of which have never been exhibited before.
The museum will focus on the history of Ancient Egypt from Prehistory to the Greco-Roman period.
Once operational, the museum is expected to receive 15,000 visitors a day, and over five million each year.
The museum is located 2km from the Giza pyramids and will occupy 50ha of land.
Part of the museum will open to visitors by 2019, with the final grand opening due in late 2020.
Earlier this year Acconia won contracts in Saudi Arabia, has tested driverless heavy construction machinery in Spain and taken the New South Wales government to Australia’s Supreme Court over a light rail system in Sydney.
Image courtesy of Acciona
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